CAEN-2 OCT62-PB
HERB CAEN AND HIS FEATHERED FRIENDS THE PIGEONS IN UNION SQUARE

CAEN-2 OCT62-PB
HERB CAEN AND HIS FEATHERED FRIENDS THE PIGEONS IN UNION SQUARE

Photo: SFC

Image 2 of 3

Seagulls and pigeons eat from a pile of food left by people feeding the birds around Spreckels Lake on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif.

Seagulls and pigeons eat from a pile of food left by people feeding the birds around Spreckels Lake on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif.

Photo: Lea Suzuki, The Chronicle

Image 3 of 3

Letters to the editor, Aug. 5

1 / 3

Back to Gallery

Live in harmony with birds

With regard to the latest flap over feeding birds: As a lifelong bird lover, I feel political correctness often belies common sense ("Crying fowl for a reason," Chronicle Watch, July 25).

If we are talking about seagulls and pigeons, understand that these species thrive in urban environments because they scavenge; they'll eat almost anything except produce - meat or grains in the form of burgers, fries, bread or chips. They are not here because people intentionally feed them but because, like rats and raccoons, they thrive on our leftovers.

If some are concerned about healthy diets for these species, I would suggest they should be more concerned as to why most of our songbirds have diminished or disappeared from the urban landscape. This has nothing to do with whether we feed them or not.

Everything humans do affects other species in any environment. I consider it more important to develop understanding of and even a sense of honor for our animal brethren rather than impose our political correctness upon them. When we take our children to the park to feed the ducks, we are instilling in them respect for and a love of nature. It's a good thing.

Someday we might learn to live in harmony with the other creatures, but we have a long, long way to go. Meanwhile, don't worry about what gulls and pigeons eat or why they're here, because they are here, and they eat what they want.

In defense of the city's pigeons

I assume that the main purpose of not feeding pigeons is to let them die off.

Even though you purport to care about their health and diet, it is perfectly true that city pigeons will eat whatever they can find when they are always hungry, being seen pecking at white spots on the sidewalk, for instance.

We have so few birds now, no city sparrows that can be sighted. Pigeons are intelligent birds and are often demonized. But you may as well say it like it is that this policy is to ensure that they will starve and die off, and we can't even help them a little, because we break the law if we "entertain" ourselves by occasionally feeding them.

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels ... upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop." (Mario Savio, Berkeley, 1964).

Snowden doesn't deserve our scorn

Is it not ironic that, even as bipartisan congressional momentum and public sentiment build to curb the National Security Agency's virtually unfettered surveillance activities, Edward Snowden, whose expose of those activities has, as The Chronicle put it ("Time to curb domestic spying," Editorial, Aug. 2), "ended a blank-check approach on intelligence gathering" for which "the country is the better," remains an object of widespread scorn and is likely to face serious criminal sanctions when in U.S. custody?